Engineer Rashid, a suspected terrorist aide and funder in jail, has been granted bail for election campaigning. Engineer Rashid was arrested under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and has been in jail since 2019. He won the Lok Sabha election by contesting from jail. With great difficulty, he was granted a short-term bail to take oath and his bail plea to participate in the proceedings of Parliament was rejected. But suddenly, no one knows what changed and Rashid has been granted 20-day bail to campaign for his party’s candidates in the assembly elections. He will remain on bail till October 2. Voting is to be held in the state on September 18, 25 and October 1.
The most interesting thing is that as soon as bail is granted by the lower courts in money laundering cases, the agencies rush to the higher courts and even get the bail cancelled. This happened in the case of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. But when Rashid was granted bail by the lower court, the agencies forgot that one can also go to the higher court against the bail. Now contrast this with Hemant Soren. His party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha was contesting on five Lok Sabha seats and they had sought bail for campaigning on the basis of Kejriwal’s bail for campaigning, but they did not get bail. Kejriwal was also granted bail by the Supreme Court. But the lower court itself granted bail to engineer Rashid for campaigning.